Webster: Need 'I' in team in Congress' Cliff Bowl

The fruit is low for a columnist at the New Year. In lieu of thought or rash judgment, you can either recap, resolve or predict or go over who died.

Like Mrs. Coleman, a beautiful old mountain woman with snow white hair who stopped people on the street and told them riddles and made them glad they had come to Pikeville. She could not solve the big riddle of why a woman is born to die, and went on to hopefully find out.

Mrs. Coleman got famous with my readers for asking me what has four eyes and cannot see. When I pretended not to know, she proudly declared: "Alabama!" and walked off cackling in delight. So did I.

She was as important as Dave Brubeck, who was mentioned by the end-of-year programs, and almost as important as Earl Scruggs, who often was not. Too red state.

The year 2012 was when Congress officially became a reality show. Maybe this year they will make them act it out in prime time so we can go to bed and not lay there awake with no stimulus, wondering if we are still in the middle class or not.

The Cliff Bowl was not over until late but it taught us that groups are dangerous and that in politics, there needs to be some "I" in team. When votes are allowed and 535 people get to vote, things happen. If there were only two votes, Sen. Harry Reid's and Rep. John Boehner's, then you would have a tie and there are no provisions in politics for a sudden death playoff.

On at least two occasions, the House tapped Hillary on her little hip and told her to roll over and play nice, but both times she had a headache. She is the third girl in a row to be the secretary, which was as high as we would let them go in grade school too. Her job will be taken by Sen. John Kerry, whose pictures in the paper will be unable to get his whole chin in.

Congress crisped Susan Rice, which cast a chill on all government spokespeople sent out to lie and say that a terrorist attack was actually a tourist attack. Who will the government get to lie for it if we are going to let it ruin their careers and lead to secretaries of state with massive heads?

Last year was also the year that Lisa Jackson, whom I believe is one of Michael's little sisters, resigned as head of the EPA, causing an instant coal boom. We don't know if some coal company president was called and told of her resignation before anybody else, but that's the way we would do it in Kentucky.

Jackson stuck her nose into the right of mountain people to destroy their own soil and water, and we didn't like it a bit. Richard Nixon was the last president who enforced environmental laws as they were written and look what happened to him.

As it happens, 2012 was also the year that my friend Bud was in a waiting room at a Veteran's Hospital where Fox News was bellowing like a dying calf in a hailstorm about too much government. Some old codger chimed in and declared that the government didn't serve the people and was a pretty bad deal, etc.

Bud took all he could and then bellowed back to the old guy: "Then take off that g.d. government oxygen mask, get out of that g.d. government wheelchair and leave this g.d. government hospital!"

Prediction: In three years, University of Kentucky football coach Mark Stoops and Western Kentucky University's Bobby Petrino will switch jobs.

Larry Webster is a Pikeville attorney. Reach him at websterlawrencer@bellsouth.net.